The Four Basic Principles Of Fascism

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I don"t think it would happen any time soon but no I wouldn't do that but other then my fascist views I have both right and left wings views im in the middle basically.

There aren't universally recognized "principles of fascism." Many historians dispute the existence of "generic fascism" and many more insist that Nazism (the most notorious case) shouldn't qualify.

Of the ones who do try to define it, the best non-communist definition is Roger Griffin's of "palingenetic ultranationalism" or more generally

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Most other aspects reflect the fact that as a nationalism movement fascism reflects the tradition in which is rooted, in some cases that involves the race, in others it's more statist or allows more religious overtones.

Although struggle is always recognized in theory, war is not always associated with it depending on the national ambitions and capabilities of the state in which the movement is based. Thus in France and until the late 30s Romania and many small European states fascist movements did not incorporate war as an aim.

Rigid class structures weren't really consistent either, usually attempted to promote greater class equality was involved as part of the means of assuring national unity by ending class struggle.

Nothing would be worse for disabled people, especially those with "social dyslexia" (or for anyone), than fascism. In places like North Korea or islamic theocracies one could be suddenly executed/imprisoned/tortured/maimed for noncompliance because "you know it when you see it".

Last edited by petitesouris on 04 Apr 2012, 10:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

Some of these aspects remind me much of the all American ideals.

Big deal. An intersection nothing but the complement of a union of complements.

De Morgan died for us.

ruveyn

Au contraire, the union is what is the complement of a intersection of complements.

You can in essence replace the word "fascism" with "Christian far right" in the history books from the early 1900 up to and including 1950 or so without changing the meaning of the text what so ever. Hitler's birthday was celebrated in the Catholic Church every year until the fall of the third Reich, Hitler himself was Catholic and his book Mein Kamph contains numerous references to the Christian God. One of the First treaties Hitler made was in fact with the Catholic Church.

This is also true for Mussolini who made the deal which made the vatican its own state and he maintained close ties with the Catholic Church throughout his reign.

Father Tiso was a Catholic Priest and leader of the Slovak fascist party.

Franco had the support of the Church, and I could go on.

Fascism is more or less a religiously motivated totalitarian state-capitalism-socialism blend.

If fascist just means "economically left-wing and culturally right-wing", then I am probably some sort of fascist.

I am very collectivist when it comes to economic matters, but I believe that immigration should be carefully controlled in order to not let the "wrong people" in (where "wrong" is defined in terms of values and not in terms of race), and I don't think that there is any inherent value in preserving backward cultures (and I would count Nazism as a backward culture). I would very rarely advocate war, though.

The way I think about it is: in order to have my collectivist utopia, everyone needs to be on the same page. Collectivism will only work if everyone trusts each other, and people will only trust each other if they have a shared set of values.

[quote="Declension"]If fascist just means "economically left-wing and culturally right-wing", then I am probably some sort of fascist.


That's the way I view my fascist political views.

This idea goes back as far Plato's Republic, and for all I know even further. Plato's idealized state would bowdlerize religious texts (Hesiod and Homer hardly present the gods in the best of lights, and Plato would "fix" this), enforce eugenics, foist on the bulk of the population a "Myth of the Metals" and on and on. Supposedly the state would be a meritocracy, with "Philosopher-Kings" benevolently dispensing justice and what not, but you don't need to look to closely between the lines to see the iron fist inside the velvet glove.

I suppose the modern version of this began with Hegel, whom I admit I've never been able to stomach more than a few pages at a time. But I will posit that the term "state" is used a bit too loosely in the above. In some fascist states (notably Italy, until about 1936) there was no racial component to the ideology; in National Socialist Germany it was there from the first. Indeed, the state was theoretically an embodiment of the Volk, and was a supernatural, mystical representation of all their combined hopes and dreams. And, of course, you were either "in" the Volk or "out." This is why the Nazis always denied they were fascists, and were quite specific that this ideology was not for export, it being the spiritual manifestation of the ... blah, blah, blah...

In other words, as originally envisioned Italian fascism was a political and economic enterprise, not a racial one. This did change as Mussolini came more and more under Hitler's influence. Of course, the biggest outcome of this nonsense was Enrico Fermi leaving Italy in disgust (he had a Jewish wife), so draw what conclusion you will from that.

Finally, what is also interesting is that this goal is actually rather kept under wraps during their rise to power. It certainly was in Nazi Germany, where Hitler promised full autonomy for Catholic schools and youth groups, free and independent Lutheran churches and so on. All lies, of course. Robert Paxton makes a point that what he calls "Conservative Authoritarians" are essentially played like a fiddle (e.g. Hindenburg and Hitler) until they're no longer needed. At which point they better do as they're told, like everyone else.



This would automatically exclude Franco's Spain, Salazar's Portugal and Hungary under Horthy from consideration as fascist states. None of them held ideologies along these lines, though maybe Franco made some noises about it before and during the Civil War. But after the war, he rounded up the most "radical" (i.e. most fascist-like) of his Falangist followers and gave them what must have been the biggest surprise of their lives. Certainly their last, anyways. And as to the rest, he essentially suffocated the party with the state bureaucracy, making them one and the same.

Horthy was a strange beast, not even sure what you'd call him. He waltzed into power when the Romanians crushed the Communist uprising under Bela Kun, made himself "Regent" (the king was in "exile" in Switzerland) and was basically the last word on everything in the country. Unfortunately he didn't dare move against Hungary's fascist party (Arrow Cross) for fear of Hitler, but actually butted heads with the Germans over the deportation of any Jews who were Hungarian citizens (a couple thousand in Carpathians who weren't? Oh, well.) Of course he was deposed, despite the deaths of thousands of Hungarians at Stalingrad, and the Arrow Cross thugs took over (I'm not even sure if you can dignify them with any political label, fascist or what.) And the country went down the toilet, even before the Soviets invaded. Oddly, he is also the only Protestant who might qualify as a fascist dictator that I'm aware of during the World War II era (1933-45). Even more oddly, he didn't hang at Nuremburg, but lived in exile in Spain and Portugal until the 1960s.



This was and was not the case in NS Germany. Take a look at cabal that surrounded Hitler: Clubfoot Joey Goebbels was lower middle-class at best, Martin Borrmann's father was a postman, Ernst Roehm, 'til he got his, was a rather flamboyant homosexual, etc. Though Goering came from a prominent family, Speer from a wealthy one, both had fallen on hard times before they got on the Nazi gravy train. Hell, look at Hitler himself. In 1919 he was a down and out bum.

What they did have was a series of bizarre laws that essentially made farmers into serfs (they owned the land, but couldn't sell it, had to farm it) locked factory workers into their jobs, etc. However, Shirer is to be believed bribery was so rampant if you had the dough, you could grease your wheels and move along. But I guess for the mass of workers, this was likely the case.

Hmm. Will have to think on this one. I can't think of a general other than Rommel who did NOT come from a military family, either. 'Course one of the ones with the best "pedigrees" (Guderian) also came up with the idea of Blitzkrieg, and was bitterly opposed by the general staff at first. Still, maybe closer to the truth than I first thought.



No argument here.



I believe it was Orwell who said that "When I call Jones a fascist, all I am really saying is that I hate Jones."



And a lot more efficient.



Which of those (democracy, etc.,) was Stalinist Communism not opposed to? May be not rationalism, but then again when a crackpot like Lysenko and his nutjob ideas are the official ideology in biology, may be so.



One of the Nazis first acts when they came to power was to dissolve every small corporation in the country. Not sure how that "promotes a private economy." And when "government regulation" makes serfs out of farmers, labor unemployable at any job but the one currently held and is essentially the only market for a huge chunk of the goods being produced by said economy, I ain't seeing any sort of revival of a private economy.

Also, if you want to take a stroll down crackpot lane go look up Mussolini's "Council of Corporations" sometime. Labor, management and capital were all supposed to join hands and sing hossanahs to El Commando Supremo for setting production targets, wages, return rates on investments, and for all I know how many times a week you could poop. I think it basically collapsed under its own weight two or three times...but give 'em credit, they kept reviving it. I think it was considered an essential piece of doctrinaire fascism, so they had to keep at it.

Anyway, how did Mussolini's structure, if not exactly the results, differ from what Stalin did with his "Socialism in one country?" The funny thing here being that Stalin sort of made something work that should have been an anathema to him, while Mussolini couldn't make work what was supposedly a core belief.



This sure sounds like the USSR from 1930 or so forward. I don't have the figures at hand, but I can't imagine very many Latvians, Ukrainians, Uzbeks, etc. ever graced a Politburo seat. "Great" Russians pretty much top to bottom in any position of power as I understand it.

Odd, because at the start of the revolution you had a Jew/Finn/etc mongrel in Lenin in charge, that switched to a Georgian (Stalin) and the first leader of what became the KGB was in fact a Pole. And as best I recall nothing even close to that existed by 1930. Sure seems like "Ethnic Dominance" to me.




IIRC, the term "Islamo-fascism" was coined by an Italian socialist to describe the Iranian Revolution of 1979-80.


You could make a VERY strong case for the Catholic hierarchy playing footsie with Franco and the Nazi-backed regime in Croatia. But in Italy? Not so much. The Italian people lost interest in the war and the will to fight very quickly. I'd say on that basis alone the most Mussolini ever got in support was downright tepid.

If you've ever read Goebbels' diaries, he goes off on tirades about the Catholic Church, tried to forbid any Germans from visiting the Pope, and would always end his little rant with a statement like "I can't wait until the day comes when we can act as we should against them." I guess the Catholic Church could support Italy and piss off Germany, but it doesn't seem all that likely. (Goebbels was raised a Catholic, got student loans and grants through the Church without which he probably could not have completed his education, and, of course, never repaid them.)

Mussolini did sign a treaty with the Vatican that cleaned up the diplomatic mess that arose with the seizure of the Papal States circa 1870, I'm guessing that's where most people get this idea.

the Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin was borderline fascistic, and in fact Stalin employed fascist methods to continually stay in power.

His god-like fatherly image not withstanding, Stalin would routinely exploit Russian, and only Russian nationalism, in disregard for all other minority nationalities. Georgia, from where he came from, was far from an independent state, and didn't benefit at all from Stalin's Greater Russian propaganda.

The only reason there was a Soviet "Union" was because the Red Army crushed all independent states, be they anarchist(Ukraine) or right-wing.

These states, in a reversal of Lenin's original thesis that minority nationalities have a right to national self-determination(and thus a right to secede from Russia, be it socialist or non-socialist), were merged with Russia proper and reorganized into regional Soviet Socialist Republics(SSR), as a way to preserve the former Russian Empire and as to not weaken Soviet Russia's position politically or economically.


Furthermore, the very idea that after a successful seizure of power by the urban proletariat and rural peasantry, the old state machinery could be wielded by the people proved to be false.

For a time workers' militias had been set up to replace the old Czarist army, while workers' control of industry had for a short while replaced the top-down managerial system often associated with conventional Capitalism.

This all changed when the Left SR's and the Bolsheviks created the Red Army that eventually overshadowed the workers' militias, while workers' control gave way to a nationalized system of industrial management.

This effectively created a fascistic environment in the future Soviet Union and was a perfect way for Stalin to control everyone, be they Russian, Georgian, or Ukrainian. Much like modern-day China, how is one supposed to rise up against the man whom controls a several million strong Red Army at his very fingertips?

My (long) point is that fascism can occur anywhere, be it a socialist state or a capitalist state, in variety of different forms.

Two elements are always present. The centrality of supremacy of the State and the supremacy of the All or Collectivist order over the individual. This was true in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and in the Soviet Union. Lenin was just as much a thug and a collectivist as was Stalin. He didn't live long enough to show it all as did Stalin.

ruveyn

Interestingly enough Lenin sought the removal of Stalin from his high political position, but unfortunately Lenin's decision was voted down.

Before this as well, there was a vote to liquidate the Cheka, the Soviet secret police force. That too was voted down.

About a decade later, Stalin would use the Cheka to kill off all or most of the 'old Bolsheviks.'


Its quite disturbing how no one realizes in any society at the present time that fascism is on the rise...until it is too late, be it Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.

In the United States we have had a kind of "friendly fascism" since the administration of FDR. Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt were also "friendly fascists" but they called themselves Progressives. Did you know the the Wilson Administration nationalized the privately owned railroads of the United States (because of the Great War) and did not return the railroad to their owners until 1922. In 1942 the Secratary of Agriculture of the United States sued a farmer for growing extra wheat, not for the market, but for his own consumption. See Wichardt v Filburn 1942. Under both Woodrow Wilson and FDR the Draft was enacted in spite of the prohibition against involuntary servitude specified by the 13 th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The U.S. Constitution has been dead nearly a hundred years. Fortunately some of the Bill of Rights is still intact.

ruveyn